New York - US President Barack Obama sought to revive a stalled Middle East peace process Tuesday, telling both sides they must commit to starting real negotiations aimed at reaching a final solution to the conflict. Obama's call for progress came after a three-way meeting in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on the sidelines of a summit for the UN General Assembly.
"It is past time to start talking about negotiations," Obama said. "The permanent status negotiations must begin and must begin soon."
"My message to these two leaders is clear: Despite all the obstacles, despite the history ... we have to summon the will to break the deadlock," Obama said.
The meeting took place at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan after Obama had separate meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas. But the gathering occurred without an agreement by both sides to restart peace talks.
The talks were dampened by a warning earlier Tuesday from Israeli President Shimon Peres to the Palestinians that they should not expect an end to all Israeli settlement activities. Expectations were low, with few predicting any breakthrough in the stand-off on the settlement issue that would allow a resumption of peace talks.
The exception was Peres: "The fact that the meeting is taking place in itself creates hope," he told students at an agricultural school in northern Israel, according to a statement from his office.
"I support the prime minister's position that negotiations should be opened without preconditions," Peres said.
"What do the Palestinians expect? That we announce that East Jerusalem is a settlement?" he asked rhetorically, adding there was "no chance" that Israel would agree to do so.
Abbas has made a total freeze of Israeli settlement activity a condition for resuming peace talks with the new Netanyahu government - and initially for meeting him as well.
Abbas had not met Netanyahu since the hardliner took office almost six months ago.
Washington convinced Abbas to meet the Israeli premier on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly debates in New York, despite its failure to pressure Netanyahu into accepting his demands for a total settlement freeze.
Netanyahu, while accepting the policies of previous Israeli governments to build no new West Bank settlements, has acquiesced only to a limited and temporary moratorium of construction within existing ones.
To appease right-wing Israelis, he has approved the construction of nearly 3,000 new apartments throughout West Bank settlements. Beyond that, his government has said it is willing to freeze construction elsewhere in the West Bank for up to nine months.
East Jerusalem - or Jewish neighbourhoods built within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries but on occupied West Bank land - would, however, also not be included in the moratorium.
Abbas has rejected that offer. Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell attempted to finalize a long-awaited compromise in frantic shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Ramallah over last week, but failed.
Obama said Mitchell will continue the efforts next week in Washington with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will give Obama a progress report by mid-October.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, meanwhile, said in New York Tuesday that the Palestinians had not changed their position.
The absence of a deal dashed Obama's hopes to announce a relaunch of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process after the meeting, and Obama did not point to specific progress in his statement to reporters.
"Success depends on all sides acting with a sense of urgency," Obama said.
Critics have charged the parley was little more than a photo opportunity, aimed at saving face for the US president, who had put his prestige behind holding the summit.
Obama was expected to attempt to narrow the gaps between the parties in separate talks with Netanyahu and Abbas. However, he allocated only 30 minutes each for the private talks, which Mideast observers interpreted as an indication that he had no real expectations of convincing them to abandon their positions.
